


Classrooms

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [77]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Children, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Growing up in the cadre system, Psi Corps, School, Telepath culture, The Psi Corps tag is mine, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 15:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12656673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: What cultural differences would a non-telepath teacher notice in a Corps classroom?The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	Classrooms

**Author's Note:**

> 1/22/18 - Edits have been made for clarity.
> 
> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

         This essay's premise is, of course, a hypothetical one, since there would never be any normals teaching for the Corps, and it's rare even for teachers born outside the Corps to teach in the Corps.

         But I nonetheless feel this is an important hypothetical in order to present some cultural differences.

  * **Students are more likely to wait to be called on by a teacher than to raise their hands in class to show they know material.**



         Corps culture has many Asian influences. One is that in the classroom, students are expected to sit quietly and absorb what the teacher tells them. They do not speak unless they have been directly called upon by a teacher to answer a specific question. Raising one's hand to show one knows the answer can be read as rude to one's peers ("show off") or interrupting the teacher's lesson. Students may, however, raise their hands to ask questions, if the teacher calls for questions.

         When students are called on to address the teacher/demonstrate knowledge, they stand to address the teacher.

         Talking without having been asked to speak, or talking back to a teacher, is not permitted.

         If students have developed telepathy, they may telepathically signal to the teacher that they have a question, and they will be called on during the question period, or the teacher will answer their question without interrupting the lesson.

         "Laters" are more likely to raise their hands or to call out than their Corps-raised peers, or to behave rudely in other ways (e.g. to arrive late to class), and this is a frequent point of tension in mixed-background classrooms, at least until the laters become more accustomed to Corps culture.

  * **Teachers and students address each other differently than how they address each other in many normal classrooms.**



         In the cadres, students refer to their teachers as "Teacher [Surname]", and teachers refer to students by their given names. Students refer to non-"teacher" adults (caregivers, etc.) as "Mr./Ms. [Surname]".

         In the Minor and Major Academies, teachers always refer to students as "Mr./Ms. [Surname]". (How teachers are referred to varies - your own teachers may be "Teacher [Surname]", while other teachers/administrators who are not your direct teachers may be "Mr./Ms. [Surname]" or "Dr. [Surname]". (It's not 100% clear how the Corps doctorate program works.)

  * **Under the age of thirteen, students do everything as a cadre. They eat, sleep, play and bathe in groups, and they attend classes as a group as well.**



         Students in this age group are socialized to be more cooperative than competitive, and competition is frowned upon. Students who have mastered material faster than their peers are expected to help their peers during class exercises. The cadre is measured together for its academic progress. Barring exceptional circumstances (e.g. serious illness), any student's failure is looked upon as a cadre failure, so students are motivated to see that they all succeed. ("What hurts one hurts all.")

         An essay assignment asking young students to write about "themselves" as individuals would be met with confusion and reluctance. Students would, however, enthusiastically write essays about their cadre.

  * **Some children in the Corps have contact with their parents or other family members, while others do not.**



         An essay assignment asking students to write about their families (in the biological sense, not the Corps) would thus cause tension in the group, and would be resisted by the cadre. Students might collectively decide to write their essays about the Corps instead, to avoid these tensions, and not to appear to be placing their biological families over the Corps and their cadres.

         Similarly, an assignment asking students to write (even hypothetically) letters to their families would not go over well (assuming, of course, in this hypothetical, that such an assignment would even be approved in the first place). A better assignment to teach children to write letters would be to ask them to write to a former teacher, or to a character from one of the cadre's favorite vids.

  * **Most telepath students have little control over their future careers.**



         An assignment asking small children "what you want to be when you grow up" might have half the class saying "Psi Cops" and the other half saying reasonable things ("teacher", "nanny") or complete fantasy ("bird!"). As children get a little older, they learn that they actually have very little choice in career path, and that to a large degree, the Corps decides this for them.

         Such is the impact of telepaths having been excluded from almost all careers by Earth Alliance law (the normal-run Senate, courts, etc.), with the exception of jobs within the Corps (the Corps has its own lawyers, doctors, etc.).

         So, an assignment asking older students "what they want to be when they grow up", even to children still in the cadre system, would result in a polite reminder from the cadre that they don't decide such things - the Corps does, and the Corps is Mother and Father.

         Career path is determined by several factors: 1) P-rating (out of their control), 2) their biological family's place in the Corps' social hierarchy (out of their control), and 3) grades + how well they perform on high-stakes exams (the only factor within their control). Students are "tracked" in the Minor Academy (ages 13-15) based on these factors, unless they haven't developed telepathy yet, in which case their track remains unclear for longer.

         A student's social status in the Corps depends on factors such as how long his or her family has been in the Corps, and what sorts of jobs his or her parents (or grandparents) held in the Corps. Students who grew up in the Corps (or entered very young) have higher status than "laters", and students who attended the Corps flagship school in Geneva have status over those who did not (and within that school, Cadre Primers have the most status). Students who come from families of higher status will have more career choices and paths open to them than students from lower-status families.

         (Lyta Alexander, Talia Winters and Al Bester all come from high-status families in the Corps, with Lyta Alexander and Al Bester both being former Cadre Primers, the highest social stratum. Harriman Grey, in contrast, is a "later", but he somehow got picked for the (relatively) high-status position of liaison to a high-ranking EarthForce officer. Sandoval Bey, a later, became chief of MetaPol. Before the Johnston era, there was some mobility in the Corps, but only for the laters who excelled - while later, Johnston placed _only laters_ in top administrative positions, because they were easier for him to control.)

         In whatever time period we're discussing, however, some things remained constant - it's not within a student's control what their P-rating is, what family they were born to, and whether they're Corps-raised or a later. Thus the exams are the only piece students have under their control (e.g. a later who excels at his or her exams can rise in the Corps, and a Corps-raised student who does not excel can fall or stagnate).

         P12s do not automatically become Psi Cops - the process is actually highly competitive, and students are screened both for the right "book smarts" as well as the right temperament and "field sense". A P12 who is deemed too lazy, or only a mediocre student, will be expelled from the Psi Cop preparatory program in the Major Academy and may end up in the Business Division or working for the courts, if his or her family doesn't have the pull to get him or her a job within the Corps. (One of Bester's classmates gets expelled from the Psi Cop preparatory program for not maintaining a B average and for lacking sufficient self-motivation - a desire to do his utmost best whether he has been explicitly asked to do so or not - and from his rude behavior in class, it also seems to me that he's likely a later.)

  * **Thus schooling in the Corps is paradoxical - cooperation is paramount in one's younger years, and then once a student graduates from the cadres and gets his or her gloves, the school culture flips and becomes for a time highly competitive, with high-stakes tests (written exams, field tests, etc.) determining a student's future.**



         Students who aspire to be Psi Cops, bloodhounds or in other high-stakes jobs face more pressure than other students (e.g. students in the Business Division), but even within the Business Division, a student's grades, motivation and performance on exams will affect his or her employment prospects after graduation.

  * **In Corps schools, teachers live on campus.**



         Teachers of young children live with their cadres. Teachers of older students live in on-campus apartments. School administrators are likely also to live on campus.

         The Corps' flagship in Geneva is located next to administrative offices for the Corps itself.

  * **Every Corps school (aside from the Geneva School) has at least one "liaison" to the Corps.**



         The school liaison's job is to ensure that the curriculum of each school stays in line with Corps' standards for content and rigor. If a teacher's lesson deviates too far from what has been approved to be taught (academically, politically or otherwise), this is the person he or she has to answer to. Children across the Corps, wherever they live on Earth (or off-world) learn similar things, and are expected to meet the same standards academically at each grade level.

        This structure is similar to what's done in this world in schools in China.

        Much of the political content as taught in Corps schools is written by normal policymakers in EarthGov ("normals _wrote_ the handbook, Al"), and telepaths are expected to teach it to their youth without deviation.

        That's all I can think of for now... I'll write another of these if I think of more. :)


End file.
